Use of minimally invasive procedures, such as catheter ablation, to treat a variety of heart conditions, such as supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias, is becoming increasingly more prevalent. Such procedures involve the mapping of electrical activity in the heart, such as at various locations on the endocardium surface (“cardiac mapping”), to identify the site of origin of the arrhythmia followed by a targeted ablation of the site. To perform such cardiac mapping a catheter with one or more electrodes can be inserted into the patient's heart chamber.
Under some circumstances, the location of the catheter in the heart chamber is determined using a tracking system. One type of a tracking system that may be used to track the location of the catheter inside the heart chamber is an independent tracking system based on the use of magnetic or electric fields to sense and track the location of the catheter. The location of a catheter tracked using such an independent tracking system is thus provided in terms of the tracking system's coordinates system.
The matching of the catheter's location according to the independent tracking system and a coordinate system corresponding to some type of 3D anatomical representation of the heart cavity, is called coordinate system registration.